James Cameron: I nearly brawled with Harvey Weinstein at Oscars

Director James Cameron said he nearly fought disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein when Titanic won at the Oscars.

Cameron said a brawl was prevented when the television cameras returned from an advert break on the night in 1998 when his film scooped 11 Academy Awards.

He conceded a lot of people would rather he had gone through with it in hindsight, now Weinstein has been accused of sexual harassment and assault by a string of women, but said the argument was over the producer’s treatment of director Guillermo Del Toro.

Harvey Weinstein has been accused of sexual assault and harassment by a string of women (Vince Bucci/AP)

“I remember almost getting in a fight with Harvey Weinstein and hitting him with my Oscar,” he said in an interview with Vanity Fair, published on Sunday.

“It was happening on the main floor at the (theatre)… and the music had started to play to get back in our seats. The people around us were saying, ‘Not here. Not here’. Like it was OK to fight in the parking lot, you know, but it was not OK there when the music was playing, and they were about to go live.”

The argument was about Weinstein’s treatment of Del Toro when they worked together on Mimic.

“Harvey came up glad-handing me, talking about how great they were for the artist, and I just read him chapter and verse about how great I thought he was for the artist based on my friend’s experience, and that led to an altercation,” Cameron, 63, added.